Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Politicians
keep hitting the same nail over and over on the general theory that
they are right and the damned nail doesn't know better.

Point
Made:
The knee jerks are complaining that Colin Kaepernick
should be ashamed for exercising the rights our soldiers have died to
give him,
especially Mr. Trump who finds the exercise of our freedoms
reprehensible.

Particularly
Busy:Italy,
which has sufficient problems of its own, dragged nearly 6,500
migrants from the Mediterranean in 40 separate
rescue operations off Libya in a single day. We genuflect to the
Stars and Stripes and pretend to care. The Italians show
they care, then do,
then go out and
do it again.

Good
Question:
“If
Washington is willing to provide health insurance to many of your
state’s residents — and in so doing pump dollars into your
state’s economy — why wouldn’t you say yes?” Because
you are a Republican running one of the 19 states that are still
refusing free money, denying health care to millions. Just because
they can.

Friends
of Friends:
Saudi Arabia, which has been sending large cargos of weaponry to
al-Qaeda groups in southern Yemen, is now equipping 5,000 al-Qaeda
fighters to do their dirty work in Yemen because the Yemeni rebels
have been regularly defeating SA troops in the north.

Validation:
The Clinton Foundation proves that anyone who figures out how the
system works can work the system. The Clinton's single-minded pursuit
of power and riches should serve as a bed-time story for all our
children.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Doomed
to Success:
Obamacare's success will
doom it. The idea was to provide health insurance to millions of
Americans who could not afford commercial plans. And millions
did sign up. And then they thought they were supposed to use the
new policies, and they
did. But insurance companies do not want to insure people who
actually use their insurance, any more than auto insurance companies
want people who have accidents. Aetna, Humanna, UnitedHealth, Cigna
and their friends want
only the
medical version of the safe driver. Any insurer who takes on people
who actually get sick is not
going
to make as much profit as it wants. And insurers know – thanks to
all the data everyone has on everyone these days – exactly who to
insure and who to avoid. And under Obamacare, the
government is going to end up having to front the cost of all
those people the private companies don't want. Eventually the
government will have to move towards a single payer system where the
relatively healthy (the young) pay more than they “use” so that
the relatively unhealthy (mostly the older) can get decent treatment.
This will be done with the promise that when the current young
become older and sicker, they too will be taken care of. It will
eventually become Medicare for all. What we're going through now is
simply the bumpy road to a national health service. Either we'll get
there, or we'll have the sick and maimed begging in the streets.

Yellen's
Quiet
Yelling:Fed
Chair Janet Yellen's yawner at the Jackson Hole conference, carefully
examined, confirms that the world's central bankers have no idea what
they are doing or what might come next or what they might be able to
do when another crash comes along. Obviously the 'new normal' is that
the central banks will continue what was supposed to be – eight or
nine years ago when it began – an emergency measure. Lost
completely in the central banks'
panic to support banks and stock markets have been various nations'
economies and laboring classes.

Plundering
101:
We are getting a refresher course in capitalism via the EpiPen epic.
And it's not just Mylan, it's Gilead ($1,000 a pill hep C drug) and
Valeant (Welbutin
at $1,400 a month for life) and Pharma-Bro Martin Shkreli's Turing
($750 a tab for an AIDs medicine). All of these pharmaceutical
companies were pricing their goods as high as they could to maximize
their profits from people who then had to chose between paying up or
dying. The real treat is that these companies find ways to transfer
the cost to the taxpayers when the actual customers don't have the
money. Along the way several of these exemplary capitalists have
moved their putative headquarters overseas to avoid US taxation. All
legal and all above board and I don't see what the problem is unless
you want some sort of socialized medicine.

Third
Place:
The world has three ice caps – the Arctic, the Antarctic, and the
Himalaya. All three are melting, but the 46,000 glaciers covering
100,000 square kilometers of
the Himalayas is
likely to cause the most direct damage and quite soon, relatively.
About1.3 billion people will be directly affected – along the major
river systems flowing out the area; the Yellow and Yangtze, the
Irrawaddy and Ganges and the Mekong. First they will flood and then
they will fade.

Monday, August 29, 2016

On
The Record:
Seven months ago a federal judge ordered the State Department to
release Clinton's daily appointment schedules. They will be released
in November. After the coronationelection.

Slight
Of Hand:
Mylan's EpiPen discount card and patient payment assistance plan is
an outright sham. Yes they will give you, providing you are poor
enough to qualify and persistent enough to jump the paperwork hoops,
help with your co-pay, but they intend to stick
the insurance companies with the full price - $608. Sure they
said they were cutting it by half; they lied
were being frugal with the truth.

Pesky
Petitioners: AGOP-sponsored Arizona
law requires that all
of the people who gathered signatures for a citizen-based ballot
initiative must be present in court for any and allthe legal
challenges that
Republicans can come up with to prevent actual democracy from taking
place. The AZ Secretary
of State, Republican
(surprise!) Michele
Reagan, wants to change
the law so as to shorten the time citizens have to file initiatives.

Dixie,
Deep In The Heart Of:
At Cheatham Hill Elementary Schoold in Marietta, Georgia, a white
teacher used a 'game' to illustrate the Underground Railroad. The
only black child in the class, a 10-year old girl, was repeatedly
made the role of an escaped slave who was caught, returned to the
plantation and beaten. Educational, very educational.

Health
Savings:
Republican lawmakers claim to love unborn babies -- until saving
actual fetuses starts costing actual money, then
the mommies should love the microcephlic, knowing that they did their
part to control spending and save money for war profiteers.

Clip
& Save:“‘The
the Trans-Pacific [Partnership], which has some serious flaws, will
not be acted upon this year.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell.

Yoga
Class: Clinton,
or her surrogates, used BleachBit to wipe her personal server's hard
drive, a product designed to make things you do not want anyone to
see disappear completely. Not notes about cookie
recipies or your yoga
class.

Business
Plain:"I
know that when we look at the overall U.S. population, it seems like
things are getting better.But
when you start breaking it down and you look at that core consumer
that we serve on the lower economic scale that's out there, things
have not gotten any better for her, and arguably, they're worse
because
rents are accelerating, healthcare is accelerating." -Dollar
General CEO, Todd Vasos

First
Do Some Harm:
A woman who was bleeding from a dislodged IUD was turned away from a
Catholic because
birth control devices are immoral and reprehensible and better she
should bleed to death than they should be contaminated with a birth
control device.

Odds
Are: If Las
Vegas citizens want a home-town pro football team they will have to
come up with $750 million to bribe a bunch of billionaires to bring a
team there to make outrageous profits while slowly killing their
gladiators
players. Seems like a good deal – for the owners, of course.

Friday, August 26, 2016

Noted:
While you are sputtering about Mylan's $600 EpiPens, consider this:
The American
taxpayer funded 100% of research used to develop this
no longer affordable lifesaver.

Let's
You and Him Fight:
In Syria, Turkish-backed
rebels are
fighting
US-backed rebels in Aleppo, and
on the border, US-supplied Turkish tanks are attacking US-supplied
Kurds.

Quick
Draw:
On the UT campus in Austin students are openly carrying holstered
dildos, carrying signs that say “Cocks not Glocks.” It will turn
out to be illegal to carry a dildo without a license.

Lowest
Bidder:
Thousands of helmets produced for the US military by federal
prisoners turned out to be defective.

Clarification:
The Clinton Foundation is not gag-me gross because it pressures
domestic and foreign outfits to 'donate' in hopes of getting access,
but
rather because they call it a
charity. It is not. It is a combination lobbying firm and an
employment sinecure
for their family and friends. What they are doing is at least
marginally acceptable in Washington. What isn't is pretending it is
a charity. It is not. What Jimmy Carter does is
charitable.

Interesting:
The GOPers are trying to make a big deal out of the US returning
$1.3 billion that it had been holding for over 35 years after failing
to deliver arms that Iran had paid for before they deposed our guy in
1979.

Either/Or:
While armed French cops are forcing middle-aged Muslim
ladies to remove their burkinis, the RCMP has unveiled a rather
attractive hijab that makes up
part of the official uniform for Canadian Muslim women who want
to become police officers.

Empire:
The US Treasury is telling the EU not to force Apple to comply with
their tax laws, because they don't have to here in the US. But why
should they pay US taxes? Apple is a Chinese manufacturing outfit
with some design offices in California and sales worldwide. Apple
pretty much doesn't pay taxes anywhere, certainly not in the US.

Headline:
“Turkey
makes first major foray into Syria with assault on IS.” I'm
sorry; going into the woods
to pick blackberries is a 'foray', as is venturing into a mall on
back to school weekend. Invading another country is not a 'foray'.

Bless
'em:
The University of Chicago tells its incoming freshmen that the whole
point of going to college is to be challenged,
and that UC intends to do that – without much attention to “safe
spaces” or political correctness. You want your mommy, stay home.

General
Nonsense:
A man, angered that a neighbor's tree was dropping sap on his car,
grabbed his chain saw and felled the offending tree. Right onto his
own house. A Swedish cop refused to investigate a case of alleged
groping because the victim had “gigantic
breasts.” Back in the US of A a homeowner called the police to
report his car being stolen. The cops promptly responded
and shot the homeowner; he was black. Some cops in Colorado have
been reprimanded for playing
Pokemon Go on duty. In Cormorant, MN, Doug has been reelected to
a third
term as mayor. Doug
is a dog.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Third
Time's A Charm:
There is a humongous crack spreading across the Larsen C ice shelf,
leading to fears that it will break off like Larsen A (1995) and
Larsen B (2002) did. The crevasse was first noticed in 2011 and by
2015 had grown to be about 600 feet wide and 18 miles. Now
scientists report that the crack has grown another 13 miles in the
last 4 months, reaching a total length of 80 miles and nearly 1,000
feet wide. The shelf will eventually fall off. Place your bets.

Inspiring,
Very Inspiring:
After Mrs. became Secretary of State, Mr. Clinton got $17.6 million
from a for-profit university, for going around the world “inspiring
people.”

One
More Time: For
all of you who are wondering why Mylan Drugs (formerly
a US company) can sell 60 cents worth of epinephrine in a 27 cent
dispenser for $608, repeat after me: Capitalism. There, feel better?
Senator Manchin's
daughter does, she's the CEO and makes $19 million a year – without
a graduate degree.

For
Your Enlightenment:
“The broader
national economy is in good shape: We’re at full employment, and
inflation is well within sight of, and on track to reach, our target.
Under these conditions, it makes sense for the Fed to gradually move
interest rates toward more normal levels and
begin throwing people out of work.”
John C. Williams, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, ignoring
the fact that central banks appear not to
have the faintest clue about how the economy works. But they are
pretty sure that the next crash – and thre is always next crash –
will require another
$4 trillion in Quantitative Easing – it worked so well the last
time.

Dough
Nation:About
half of the people Secretary Clinton held private meetings with at
the State Department had donated money to the family
employment/retirement scheme.

Right
Again:"It
is now clear that the Clinton Foundation is the most corrupt
enterprise in political history." Damn,
Donald's nailed another one..

D'ya
Want Fries With That?Hillary
Leave-the-cash-on-the-Dresser Clinton held a person-to-person event
for about 55 people at Justin Timberlakes's home. Only
$33,400 per person, lunch
included.

War,
What War? US
attack helicopters are providing close air support in battles against
ISIS in Libya. Quite who we are rooting for isn't real clear, but
there's always the oil.

The
Headline:The
Fed Is Now Hostage to Wall Street. Now?
Really, just now?

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Under
current rules, does the quo have to be synchronous with the quid?

Priorities:Obama
has finally made the obligatory tour of the flooded areas in and
around Baton Rouge, drawing withering criticism for not imposing the
strains of a Presidential visit on the battered area earlier (and
honoring
the governor's request that he not visit earlier). Not that his
presence did any actual good, FOX and company wanted the photo op.
The people are a lot more interested in how well FEMA works, and it
works a lot better than it did under George W.

Because
They Can:
The NJ cop who killed a black man who had his hands up will not face
any charges, because... Because he's a cop?

Ducks:After
years of claiming that the Clinton Foundation poses no ethical
conflicts for Bill and Hillary or the U.S. government, Bill now says
that if Mrs. Bill is elected it will immediately become an ethical
albatross. Sorry Bill, it became one a long time ago.

Pogo's
Place:The
real enemy is not fossil fuels, it is the economic and political
system that was made possible by fossil fuels – the extractive
economy that depends on extracting and exploiting resources as fast
as possible, tossing the depleted materials aside and going after
more, more, more.

Life
As It Is:
about 90% of the people who live in San Francisco cannot afford to
live in San Francisco.

Our
Gang:
Documents obtained from CIA
files
show
that the United States, knowing that Saddam would use
nerve gas on
Iranian troops, provided
him with targeting data.
Because he was our guy, back then. Until he wasn't. There's a
lesson there, for us and for our current friends here and there
around the world.

Cooked
Books:
The US Army's financial accounting systems are so wildly inadequate
that in a single quarter the Army made “adjustments”
totaling
$2.8 trillion in order to give some semblance
of balance. In that the Army's share of the defense budget is
somewhat shy of $500 billion, that's a neat trick. It isn't that the
money has been stolen or even misapplied – the truth is they just
don't know where it is and what it was spent on. And while a lot of
it was undoubtedly misspent or stolen, it's
not the whole $2.8 billion – but it'd be nice to have at least a
ballpark estimate of what they're doing with all our money.

Unanimity:52%
of Republicans call voter fraud major problem...
and all 52% of 'em are wrong.

Headline:“Clinton
Foundation Still Not Criminal.” Not
non-criminal, either. It also suggests that it will be, soon.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Slurpee:
Between 2000 and 2013, about 8,000 beautiful blue lakes appeared on
the surface of the Langhovde Glacier in East Antarctica. There's not
supposed to be liquid water in Antarctica. Remember the meltwater
lakes that nearly covered the Greenland Ice cap? Remember that it
was
a sign of how fast the ice was melting? Same, same. And just like in
Greenland the lakes are draining down into the glacier, weakening it
and speeding up its demise. And ours.

Absolutely:Any
Russian practicing female
genital mutilation (FGM) could face ten years imprisonment under a
new bill that
says that
FGM “has no place in a civilized society.” But
the French are
wrong about burkinis.

Yachts:
According to the
CEO of CareFirst,
Baltimore,
MD's version of BlueCross
BlueShield, if
you have to ask how much decent health insurance will cost, you can't
afford it. CareFIrst, like all US private health insurance companies
only wants
to cover young, healthy individuals, not the older, sicker and
poorer folks who actually need healthcare. Too
bad
all the public hospitals have been privatized...

Noted:
The world's best and most expensive military has not won a war in 70
years. Except Grenada. Oh,and Gulf I, if you don't
count that
as
just the opening salvo
of the ongoing Iraq/ME adventure.

Efficiency:
Since July, in the Philippines, the cops have killed 712 suspected
drug dealers and vigilante groups (assuming there's a difference)
have killed 1,067. No arrests. No evidence. No trial. Just kill
'em.

Monday, August 22, 2016

Abnormally
Normal:
NASA says that the current low levels of Arctic sea ice coverage are
not going to recover. Ten years ago this year's low levels of sea
ice would have set a record, now it is business as usual. And that
business will lead to the Arctic being essentially ice free – there
will be pockets of ice here and there, but the greater part of the
Arctic will be bare of ice. Bare of that white reflecting layer, and
once
the ice is gone and the sunlight is no longer reflected into the
atmosphere but rather penetrates and warms the darker ocean waters,
the
rate of
global warming will increase. And soon thereafter, methane releases
will begin. And that will pretty much mark the end.

Popedsicle:
The “Ice Wall” that was supposed to protect groundwater from
entering the crippled Fukushima nuclear complex and becoming
incredibly radioactive “has shown little or no success.”

Telling
Phrase:
“The new US commander in Iraq and Syria...” We
have troops in Syria? Why? Enough to have a “commander”?
What, exactly, threat to US national security does any of the the 6
or 17 or 43 sides to the Syrian civil war pose?

All
You Need Know:
Yes, it is possible to hack elections in the US. The use of
computers and the internet nearly guarantees it will happen – not
everywhere, but perhaps in a very few select pivotal places. With
electronic voting there
is no secret ballot and no guarantee whatsoever that the votes
cast and the votes counted have any relationship.

On
Closer Reading:
“The
supreme law in the US is the Constitution, which chiefly guarantees
property rights and the rights of corporations but not necessarily
the rights of human beings...”

The
Message:A
tattoo, no matter where or on whom, makes a statement: “I am trash,
I do not respect myself, and I make poor decisions.”

Efficient
Markets
Aren't:
Individuals
acting in their own self-interest within a larger system always
reduce
that larger system's efficiency, thus
rendering efficient markets a myth.

Truthiness:"Nothing
terribly
catastrophic has happened yet, so
we have decided to continue screwing responsible savers with
interest rates that are at 5,000 year lows so
that this dangerous asset bubble can persist..."
The
latest
FED minutes, ever
so slightly paraphrased.

Friday, August 19, 2016

Either/Nor:
Reports claim the US is transferring 50 nuclear weapons from the
airbase at Incerlik, Turkey to Romania for safekeeping. Other
Reports
claim they are not.

Here
And There:
The differences between soldiers stationed in our various overseas
territories and police patrolling our
streets
are becoming less and less.
And who do you think the DA works for?

Reality
Check:
A small ice cream shop in Anacortes, WA was saved because multiple
Pokéstops nearby drewa
new customer base to the neighborhood. How long before buying
Pokéstop placement becomes a routine business expense?

Global
Warning:
While a very small portion of the world's population worries about
global warming, Chinese
airlines are
seeking to hire about 100 pilots a week for the next 20 years to meet
the nation's increased demand for air travel. Air travel spews
more
CO2 than
any other way
to travel.

Switcheroo:
Those who claimed Obama paid $400 million to Iran to ransom 4
Americans got it backwards; Obama held $400 million of Iranian money
until Iran paid a 4 hostage ransom to get their money back.

Unintelligent
Design:
In the Dagestan region of Russia, which is mainly Muslim, both the
Senior Orthodox Priest and the senior Muslim cleric are calling for
all women to undergo Female Genital Mutilation because God created
"woman so that she could give birth and bring up children"
and mistakenly equipped them with the physical ability to actually
enjoy sex. And
their husbands – are scared silly that they won't measure up –
and
so criticize God for his handiwork.

Lifetime
Award;
Hillary has been lying to the US public for over 20 years, starting
long before she blamed a “vast right-wing conspiracy” for getting
Monica and Bill together and continuing thru last week when she
repeatedly lied about lying to the FBI. Why
all the lies? Because that is who she is.

Pretty
Please:
Cops in Cincinnati – where the police union wants extra pay to wear
body cameras – and in
Boston – where not a single officer volunteered to wear a body
camera – seem to think we work for them.

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Ingrate:
Just before
receiving his first classified briefing from the government's
intelligence community, Trump said it was no big deal because they
were usually wrong and have consistently propped up bad decisions by
the Executive Branch. Like invading Iraq.

And
Then There Were None:Food
Stamp rolls are declining rapidly across the country, especially in
GOP controlled states where benefits are being abruptly cut even
though federal funds are still available. It makes the people
morally strong; hungry, but self sufficient.

Tilt:
The legislation directing an audit of California's primary climate
change agency was written by an oil industry lobbyist.

Choices:
When
do we get
to have
our American Spring? When
do we get to gather in the streets and throw the bastards out? If we
cannot stomach the consensus candidate of the American elite – the
restoration of the Clinton clan by our corporate,
cultural, political, and
media
nomenclura
– and cannot embrace the cartoonish Mr. Trump, must we suffer in
silence? The streets, the streets are calling …

Appealing:
A federal appellate court has ruled that the DOJ cannot use federal
funds to prosecute marijuana users who are complying with their
states' laws. Now if we can get the same constraint placed on the
DEA.

Fear
Itself:“Americans
are afraid of many threats to their lives – serial killers, crazed
gunmen, gang bangers, and above all terrorists – but these threats
are surprisingly unlikely. Approximately three-quarters of all
homicide victims in America are killed by someone they know. And the
real threat from strangers is quite different from what most fear:
one-third of all Americans killed by strangers are killed by police.”
In
Albuquerque even the DA is “scared
of her city's police department” which has threatened
her family’s safety.

Sticks
And Stones:
Poland has made calling the Nazi death camps located in Poland
“Polish death camps” a crime punishable by imprisonment in a NaziPolish
prison.

Words:
“The
provision of healthcare cannot continue to be dependent upon the
whims and market projections of large private insurance companies
whose only goal is to make as much profit as possible. That
is why we need to join every other major country on earth and
guarantee health care to all as a right, not a privilege.” Bernie
Sanders
And
he's not talking about a
“public option”, but a true single payer system.

Making
It Up As They
Go Along:
“Central
bankers [are]
continuing
what is surely the greatest experiment in monetary policy in the
history of the world. We
are therefore in uncharted waters and it is impossible to predict the
unintended consequences of very low interest rates, with some 30% of
global government debt at negative yields, combined with quantitative
easing on a massive scale." And
whistling, past the graveyard.

Our Motto

Keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.